Joe Pavelski

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

27 goals and 54 assists in 82 games — 81 points, the highest total of a sixteen-year career, at 37 years old. A plus-11 and 14 penalty minutes at 18:28 a night, the 81st percentile among forwards.

56.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,178 minutes, the 92nd percentile. His ice went 66-48 against an expectation of 59.92-45.31.

Seven playoff games for three goals and three assists.

The Finesse Game

61 per cent of his shots came from the slot and the median travels 19 feet, the 10th percentile among forwards for distance — which means the tenth-closest band in the league. He has spent sixteen years standing where the puck ends up.

2.69 even-strength points per 60 is the 88th percentile and 8.56 shots per 60 is the 69th. Twenty-seven goals on 216 shots is 12.5 per cent, dead ordinary, and the 54 assists are the story: more than any season he had in San Jose, at an age when the assists are supposed to be what is left.

2:44 a night on the power play is the 79th percentile, with 31 per cent of his points there.

1.39 takeaways per 60 is the 32nd percentile and 1.74 giveaways the 64th. He does not carry the puck and he does not need to.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 196.

21.1 mph is the 7th-lowest top speed of the 365 forwards the tracking covers, and 0.95 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 11th-fewest. He crossed 20 mph roughly once every four games, across a full 82. Only Kevin Hayes, Nicklas Backstrom, Patrick Maroon, Matthew Tkachuk, Nick Foligno and David Perron went slower.

9.29 miles per 60 is the 76th of 365 from the bottom. He is not fast and he does not cover ground, and he took 81 points off a season anyway. Every year that gap widens is another year the tracking measures something other than what makes him good.

2.73 blocks per 60 is the 88th percentile among forwards and 4.12 hits the 54th. 0.28 penalties taken per 60 is the 8th percentile — fourteen minutes in eighty-two games, and drawn-minus-taken at plus-0.44, the 83rd.

The Intangibles

Two hundred and fifth overall in 2003, the seventh round, and 1,168 NHL games with 421 goals and 924 points.

With Ryan Suter he takes 62.0 per cent of the chances and Suter without him takes 46.4. With Miro Heiskanen 65.4 and Heiskanen without him 48.8. Both defencemen post their best numbers of the season when he is on the ice with them, and both fall to the wrong side of even when he is not.

But the same file, read carefully, says the line is not his. Without Jason Robertson he is at 48.9 over 462 attempts; Robertson without him is at 56.9. Four hundred attempts is a fragment and it points one way.

At 38 he is a slot-standing, third-of-a-line passenger with the best point total of his life. Both halves of that are true, and a club that reads only the first half will keep him too long.